ChillLax chuck, i know they are minor issues, and i did talk to James. Me and my foil hat do have a lot of down time to get sticker placement just right... They were coming off anyways. Others people get it, if the visible exterior inspection reveals things that make ya go WTF, it makes a person wonder... Oil oozing out of my clicker for the next year doesn't excite me. I think it's obvious that i am not right around the corner from them and can't just run down to the shop.

I will reluctantly tell my experience. I took my bike in for revalving front and rear last month. I booked the appointment on a Wednesday, and Zoey said they weren't busy, so it was a good time to do it. I told her what I wanted, my height, weight, my riding style and habits, the kind of soft feel I wanted. By email, Jimmy did not recommend new springs, only revalve.

I took it in on a Thursday right at opening, explained to Zoey that I wanted it back asap. She said Monday for sure, but good chance Friday afternoon, but don't hold us to it. I said fine. On Friday late afternoon I called Eric and was told they thought I was going to be gone for a week and wouldn't need it for awhile. Nothing had been done at all, and now a few others were ahead of me. I think it got done the following Wednesday.

Once home, I was checking tire pressure prior to a trip departure, I touched the front axle bolt and it moved. The cap wasn't even finger tight, it was freely spinning. Had I hit the freeway as planned, the front wheel would have come off after a couple of miles at most.

Now Jimmy did say when I picked it up that if it was still too stiff after the revalve he would swap new springs for no labor charge. Nice offer, and friendly guy. I like him. But the scheduling snafu and complete safety failure left me biting my tongue as everyone praised SPS effusively here. No doubt the valving has made a big difference, but I spent $750, I could have been killed, and I will still need replacement springs for the type of feel I wanted.

My experience with SPS may be an exception, but it was my experience. I will be replacing the springs on my own.

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As others have said this is not good.. These bikes have a proper torquing procedure to get the load on the bearings and to align the calipers to the disks. Look in your owners manual for that info on replacing the front wheel.

Once home, I was checking tire pressure prior to a trip departure, I touched the front axle bolt and it moved. The cap wasn't even finger tight, it was freely spinning. Had I hit the freeway as planned, the front wheel would have come off after a couple of miles at most.

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Not to take away the importance of this, but the great thing about the 990 front axle is it has two pinch bolts on each fork leg which also clamp the axle. You're very unlikely to have just gone down the road and had a catastrophic failure, which is part of the reason why it's designed like this. It might give you some comfort some day if it should ever happen again by accident.

This is why I don't frequent this site anymore. A bunch wannabes more concerned with sticker placement than performance. For those of you who would rather ride your bike than look at it Superplush is a sound bet!

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What about the fact that the shock was shipped sitting on the lower fork tubes? Is that o.k. for him to be concerned about? Or the fact that oil went in the rebound tube? Is that o.k. not to be thrilled about? Sure the oil will work it's way out on it's own over time (and all over the bar area of the bike) but should it be there in the first place? This is not James' first set of forks (but I suspect this was a helper). I had SPS do my suspension and have been very happy with it. In fact when it arrived in the mail I was impressed with how well it was packaged for shipping from James to me.

Woodchuck, I think you are right. You are clearly superior to all of us. With that kind of attitude you don't need to frequent this site anymore.

SPS did my forks on my 04 950 adv. the results were very good but i didn't ride it off road much. i did ride it on a dirt road full of pot holes and washboard in Mexico. it worked well. i think springs alone would have been good.

the real test was my off road bike...an 02 husaberg.

really really good. i'm a competent old dirt bike rider....have had alot of dirt bikes and have had alot of suspension work done and this it the best suspension i have ridden. frankly i think the race tech stuff is real good too. SPS seems similar to me.

i've also had james do some off the wall custom stuff too that worked out ok.

with these shops you always run the risk of having someone do your stuff in a hurry. i detest shoddy workmanship

I will reluctantly tell my experience. I took my bike in for revalving front and rear last month. I booked the appointment on a Wednesday, and Zoey said they weren't busy, so it was a good time to do it. I told her what I wanted, my height, weight, my riding style and habits, the kind of soft feel I wanted. By email, Jimmy did not recommend new springs, only revalve.

I took it in on a Thursday right at opening, explained to Zoey that I wanted it back asap. She said Monday for sure, but good chance Friday afternoon, but don't hold us to it. I said fine. On Friday late afternoon I called Eric and was told they thought I was going to be gone for a week and wouldn't need it for awhile. Nothing had been done at all, and now a few others were ahead of me. I think it got done the following Wednesday.

Once home, I was checking tire pressure prior to a trip departure, I touched the front axle bolt and it moved. The cap wasn't even finger tight, it was freely spinning. Had I hit the freeway as planned, the front wheel would have come off after a couple of miles at most.

Now Jimmy did say when I picked it up that if it was still too stiff after the revalve he would swap new springs for no labor charge. Nice offer, and friendly guy. I like him. But the scheduling snafu and complete safety failure left me biting my tongue as everyone praised SPS effusively here. No doubt the valving has made a big difference, but I spent $750, I could have been killed, and I will still need replacement springs for the type of feel I wanted.

My experience with SPS may be an exception, but it was my experience. I will be replacing the springs on my own.

Click to expand...

the cap shouldn't have been loose no excuses...

but if i understand.....you're talking about the cap on the left side....i don't think it does much. it's the pinch bolts that hold everything together

motion pro makes a guage for this purpose. bouncing on the forks or finding the free center of the axle isn't good enough because the triple clamps are likely not machined perfect and cause the fork legs to be not parallel. this will cause the forks to bind as the move down into the travel.

I had the front and back done with the 70kg springs for the front and kept the stock on the rear with a new spacer.

Opened the box and and saw the packing looked like not much effort was put into it, the shock was wrapped up but overlapping the lower fork leg tubes, not the place i would have put it. So i pulled a leg out and could see right away that the stickers weren't on straight, the excitement started to fade a bit. I started to look things over now, and found one of the rebound clickers wet with fork oil. Must have got some oil down the rebound adjuster tube, nice. Also found oil around the compression adjuster on the bottom of the other leg, and zero preload on one fork and 5 turns on the other. So i thought i would take the cap off and try to see if i could see anything, I got the cap off the fork tube, but the cap was so tight to the shaft i couldn't get it loose. fukit. I just put them back together and mounted um and await the thaw.

So i guess i was expecting a bit better QC... I managed not to get any oil down the tube when i put in my 56kg springs and new oil. I just must be a picky bastard , i tend to check shit out real well when it is a huge investment and on a 2 wheeled machine that goes 124 mph.

It will be a while till my bike is back together to get a ride in, lets hope the ride makes this fade from memory.

A few picks...

A little oil on the compresion adjuster, no idea why that would be wet with fork oil, and the nut on the valve looks a bit roughed up to me.

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <wunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <wontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <wunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <wontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]-->Hi Dusty,
I thought when we spoke the other day I had assuaged all your concerns and I apologize that you came away unsatisfied. I don't think I properly conveyed on the phone some of the reasons for some of your dissatisfaction and I wanted to explain that a bit: often bikes come in with base valves very tight and it takes some effort to remove them; because the nuts are soft aluminum they often show wear when removal is tough. Also sometimes when internal components are rusty or contain water we coat a bit of oil on the mechanism to prevent future rust. In shipping this could have leaked up and caused seeping. I hope that explains some of the issues more clearly, but regardless I am sorry that you are unhappy. It is very important to me that you feel satisfied.

I do intend to maintain excellent quality so please do call and tell me if something is not right.

Thanks, James

Click to expand...

My 950 SM suspension is slated to arrive at my Door Tuesday

My shocks rebound adjuster was frozen when i bought the bike and i asked SPS to fix this for me during rebuild. They let me know that not only had moisture got in there and corroded the shock rebound (bike has never been off road or ridden if rain) they also found the fork rebound adjuster corroded and nearly frozen. When i spoke to them on the phone they mentioned that WP didn't lubricate these enough and that they add lubricant to the rebound ajusters to prevent them from corroding in future.

Here is to hoping my SM stuff is in great condition and ready to install.

This is great to see, and what I would have expected. It is also how my suspension was shipped back to me. Makes me kind of ashamed of the way I had packed my forks to send them in to James. Let's just say I packed and shipped in my own box...

Got mine back today (Thanks James) and all looks are pristine as it was when i removed it from my street only SM. All was packaged well and no hard parts were touching other hard parts.

I had mine lowered, re-sprung and valved for sport street riding. Overall the forks are 10mm shorter and the shock is 13mm shorter. Also had the frozen rebound adjusters fixed on both forks and shock and added o-ring to each fork leg as a reference to how much travel is moving to allow fine tuning.

I sent my forks off to SPS over the winter to have them revalved. I tried re-spring-ing myself which isn't that hard to do, until I found other problems inside, more than I wanted to tackle. I got them back in about 12 days in fine working order. No harmed nuts etc. There was a bit of oil on the rebound adjustment knob, but I wiped it up and it hasn't come back yet.

I haven't got to put he new suspension through it's paces yet, but on some easy/moderate dirt and road riding so far it seems good. With the valving done and .58 springs the fork finally feels similar to the shock, I have proper static sag at both ends now .

The only think I didn't like were the stickers. On my black bike, the colors/size was a bit obnoxious to me so next time I'll ask for no stickers. Another satisfied customer here.